News:

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AuthorTopic: If you touch my junk I am going to have you arrested. (Read 6118 times)

Well, at least these new, more invasive security measures are created new business opportunities. Behold: the Flying Pasties (NSFW). Not only do they make your genitals and nipples invisible to airport scanners, but they also miraculously squeeze your tits together somehow.

The episode of mythbusters on that basically showed that an aircraft wouldn't explode from decompression. In fact, as I understand it, it's the only test ever done on the matter and FAA took great interest in their findings and methodology. Not that you necessarily want to risk shooting through terrorists into baby, nor is it good to take out part of a triple redundant system even if it is triple redundant.

I do think - and this is not an original observation - you see a lot of - I do - a lot of elderly ladies being pulled aside for one issue or another. And I suppose terrorists could use an elderly lady to attack a plane. I just don't think they ever have. It just seems like it'd make more sense to focus your efforts on things that are more likely to actually happen.

I still think nobody's going to do anything about it. A year from now TSA will continue grabbing balls, exposing travellers to x-rays and strip-searching children. Nobody will make them stop, and if it gets close, there'll be a foiled minor terrorist attack and everyone will line up for groin-grabbing again.

You're assuming that either (1) nobody's going to sue over it or (2) if they do, the courts will uphold it. I don't think either one of those is a reasonable bet.

Besides that, there's the issue that the airline industry is already in trouble and this is one more reason for people not to fly.

There are other things to consider too: some airports are already looking at hiring private firms instead of the TSA, and this is also a pretty strong issue for the Republicans to take on once they realize, oh yeah, the public's never going to think we're softer on terrorists than Democrats no matter WHAT we do.

Gizmodo puts a sensationalistic headline on a good article, in which a former assistant chief of police describes being frequently singled out for search, as well as one particular ineffective search that, she believes, was intended as punishment for asking questions.

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Given that TSA interacts with tens if not hundreds of millions of travelers each year, it is incredible to me that we, the stewards of homeland security, have failed to insist that data capturing and analysis should occur in a manner similar to what local police agencies have been doing for many years.

Some might argue that the potential for intrusion is not the same between police and TSA. I believe my experience this past weekend demonstrates otherwise. Currently, there is no way to know whether a certain male screener routinely identifies predominantly women for additional screening. There is no way to identify whether a Latino screener routinely isolates African-Americans, or vice versa. To assert that the screeners are highly trained and do not engaged in this type of discrimination, whether passive or active, is unsupportable because there is no data. You simply cannot solve problems that you do not want to identify.